On my fourth day in the Wrangell’s wilderness, I unzipped my tent to discover a fog so thick that I could barely make out the outline of my guide’s tent just a few dozen feet away.
When we’d gone to bed it was a cloudless night. To the right, left, and behind us were towering walls of stone. Before us was several miles of green valley which descended into a glacier at least a mile wide. But in the morning, we couldn’t see any of that. And, with the visibility so low, it was impossible to move ahead. All we could do was sit in camp and wait. And so, for over an hour after we finished breakfast we sat around our campsite and waited, trading stories and trying to put a good face on things.
In time the mist seemed to lift a bit, but only from the mountains to our left. Everywhere else the view was gray.
Then, as if noting an ant near his feet, Yoav, one of my 3 traveling companions, asked aloud, “Is that a bear?”
I jumped up. My eyes scanned in all directions. I didn’t see anything.
“There.” He pointed, now a big smile on his face.
What on earth is wrong with him? I wondered. Why is he smiling? I looked up the mountain side where he was pointing, but still saw nothing.
“There! I see it.” David, the other traveler with us said. A big smile was on his face too. He pointed, and this time I saw it. A blob near the top ridge probably 1,000 vertical feet above us.
Instinctively, I went to my knees. “Where’s my damned bear spray?” I cursed aloud angrily as I rifled through my coat and then my bag.
Standing up I saw the blob was no longer moving along the top of the ridge, but now seemed to be bounding down the mountainside at an astonishing pace directly in our direction.
Caption: a grizzly bear seen this past week while I was hiking in Denali National Park
“Pack up all the food!” our previously unflappable guide barked at us. “In the bear cans, everything, now!”
Back to my knees I went, my gaze darting back and forth from the bear as it flew down the mountain to the ground where I’d mindlessly strewn my things a moment before when I’d overturned my whole bag. I jammed everything smelly I could find – food, tooth paste, sun screen, old socks – into the can. I fumbled to twist the lid shut.
Caption: a black bear in the Kenai Fjords National Park seen while canoeing
The bear had traversed the entire visible mountainside in seconds. Then it disappeared into a thick section of alder that rose above the top of a hill which climbed from our camp site and obscured the bottom of the mountainside to our left. If he kept to his track down through the alder, up the backside of the near hill, he’d soon appear just a few hundred feet above us.
David and Yoav had lost their initial excitement. We were now all standing shoulder to shoulder with our guide. I was clutching my bear spray like a talisman.
Caption: fresh grizzly bear tracks in Gates of the Arctic National Park
The fog seemed to re-thicken, and the mountain top was shrouded again. The wind must have been blowing still, but I didn’t feel it. I strained to hear anything – a rustle in the branches, a roar, I don’t even know what – but all I could hear was the water below us, undying, rushing over the rocks.
We couldn’t see anything where we were standing. “I‘m going to the hill top to get a better view” my guide finally said, “Stay here”. We did. I’ve rarely felt so impotent. No feints even at male chivalry or heroism by me, David, or Yoav. Without a word, we let her go to stand watch. In my mind, I saw the bear emerging from the mist and dragging her away.
Time seemed to grind to a halt. I don’t know how long we waited there — us at the bottom of the hill, stupidly holding our bear spray, eyes aloft to our guide on the hill —but eventually when the bear still hadn’t emerged, our guide finally looked down at us, and yelled for us to go back to our tents and pack up as quickly as possible.
Caption: My guide’s tent shortly after we’d seen the bear and once the fog had begun to lift. The bear’s path went from the top of the ridge line above to a patch of alder to the right out of the frame.
Thank god I thought. We need to get out of here. But once I had my pack on my back, and we were about to leave, the pit of my stomach dropped when I realized our path was up toward the exact same path the bear had sprinted down. Climbing the mountainside took us almost 15 minutes. All the while, I kept thinking how in its descent the bear had made the distance look only a trifle.
Then, turning from our uphill climb, our guide led us directly into the patch of alders that the bear had disappeared into. My mouth went dry.
For those of you who have hiked in the backcountry in Alaska, you know there is nothing more painful to traverse than alder. Alder groves are often taller than humans, and so thickly grown you have to push away branches simultaneously at knee, chest, and head level; and if that weren’t enough in especially thick sections of alder, the ground below your feet seems swallowed up by a mat of exposed roots. In my experience, it’s not uncommon for alders to grow so thick on steep portions of mountainside that those sections become literally impassable without making long detours.
Caption: my friend Matt emerging from a bushwhack through alders in Gates of the Arctic - the look on his face says it all.
So, what is the solution? Often it’s to look for game trails (i.e. routes that animals cut through the alders over and over). Or said another way, you have to use the “bear super highway” if you want to pass.
Surely, there must be a better way I thought as we stepped onto the path, the trees closing in above our heads like a tunnel. If we run into it here, what will it do?
But onward we went. And although the bears had packed down the ground into a trail (something we hadn’t enjoyed in the days prior), my feet kept giving out from under me. I fell to ground at least three times. My pants were caked in mud. Still not wanting to show fear, I tried to channel my anxiety into making noise so we wouldn’t startle any bears. Together David and I sang various verses of many Beatles songs, particularly relishing yelling “Hey Jude” into the trees over and over and over. I didn’t think we sounded half bad, but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me my voice had been cracking the entire time either.
After an hour, when the alders finally cleared away and opened up to an unobstructed view of the glacier, we finally took a break. Throughout our walk the trail had been covered in bear scat, old and new. But we hadn’t seen any bears in person. Where were they, I wondered?
Looking around, I suddenly realized we were now in a patch of blue berry bushes. Everywhere I looked the berries were on the branches. This would certainly be where I’d hang out if I was bear I thought.
The others seemed to have grown emboldened by having made it through the path. In contrast, I felt a shell of my normal self. I was weak and tired. My mind kept playing on repeat various scenarios of how the bear could have (or still would) eat us. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. While the others picked and ate berries, I huddled on a rock alone. What madness, I thought. Eating their food. We need to get out of here.
~~~
In retrospect, this whole encounter, which occurred during my first week in Alaska seems surreal to me. At the end of the trip, our guide asked us all what the highlight of our time in the Wrangells was. David said walking the bear trail was his top memory. For me it was my nightmare.
But the truth was we were never in danger. Though I’d constructed a narrative in my mind that the bear was out for human flesh, that was never the case. Despite what movies like The Edge or The Revenant might suggest, there are very few instances of human attacks in the wild in Alaska. Unhabituated to humans or our food, grizzly bears are rarely a risk unless you startle them.
But knowing a thing and believing a thing are two different things entirely. To get over my fears, I knew I needed to spend more time with bears. So, a few weeks later I took a trip to the shores of Lake Clark National Park with a group of people in search of grizzly bears.
It was that morning that everything shifted for me. After an hour of walking the beach, in the distance, I saw a mother and her cub approaching us. We had nowhere to go, so we stood our ground, let them know of our presence by making noise, and waited as they moved up the shoreline toward us.
Bears are magnificent creatures, fierce, deadly, and huge (growing up to 600 pounds). You have to respect them as they can kill you in a moment if they want to. But in watching the cub frolic about the beach, chasing gulls, running in circles around his mother, making splashes in the water for no other seeming purpose other than he seemed to enjoy making splashes, and copying his mom as she dug up for clams I felt so much joy.
No longer consumed by fear, I was free to see the bears as they are (not just as I imagined them). And in that, I saw both the size and sharpness of their claws (and the ease with which they shoved aside large boulders); but also the bond between mother and cub, and how alike and silly a cub and child are in their play. I left that morning not only respecting the brute power of grizzlies in new way, but also feeling a strange kinship with them too.
Now, six weeks into my time in Alaska, I haven’t lost my respect for bears ability to tear me limb from limb. When I hike, I always carry bear spray. I make lots of noise on the trails. If possible, I hike in groups. But I’m no longer so consumed with fear that I irrationally believe that bears are stalking me; nor do I cower in my room and avoid trails if I can’t find a companion to hike with.
Moreover, I’ve done my best to copy what I most love about these bears. Whenever I see a patch of wild blueberries, I gorge myself. Whenever I see a pool of water, I jump in it. When I’m in the tundra, I’m not shy about taking naps. When I’m afraid, I stand my ground.
And perhaps that’s why today I was so pleased when I was hiking a mountain trail and I passed an old man. After exchanging pleasantries, in broken English he pointed at my bear spray and asked, “Bears – seen today?”
“No, not today,” I responded matter-of-factly.
“No,” he said with a big grin, and waved his finger at me. “Not true. I see you. You are a bear friend.”
